Or maybe because 98 percent of them drink the Obama Kool-Aid, they’ve always figured they were safe. You can’t really blame the AP for feeling like a battered spouse. Five years of kneepad reporting, 24/7 obsequious fawning to Dear Leader, and now Eric Holder kicks them down the stairs like they’re Michael Savage or somebody.

The FBI opened a jacket on me when I was 23 — they wanted to know where I was getting Army files that I was using in stories about the Black Panther Party. It was a pro forma
call. They knew I wouldn’t tell them. No hard feelings on either side.

But the audits
… those are something else.

The first time the feds came after me, I was a reporter for Ch. 7. My local state rep had been indicted for attempted extortion, and I was covering the trial. One evening I was in an editing suite, putting together a piece based on what the feds believed was sealed grand jury testimony about my solon. The phone rang and it was an assistant U.S. attorney.

“You run that story and you’re in big trouble,” he said.

I thanked him for his concern and hung up. The next morning the prosecutor stormed up to me in the courtroom and snarled: “You still live in Somerville, don’t you?”

A week later, I got a letter from the IRS saying that I was being audited. I took the letter to court the next day and showed it to my state rep’s defense lawyer. He didn’t seem surprised. He took a letter out of his pocket — it was from the IRS, too.

“Let me handle this,” he said. He wrote a scorching letter to the IRS, demanding to know how he’d been singled out. Then he wrote the same letter on my behalf. And that was the last either of us ever heard from the IRS. My accountant kept calling the pencil-pusher who had signed the letter, but he would never even return the call.

A few years later, the obnoxious prosecutor was nominated for a judgeship. I called up the lawyer and asked him what we were going to do.

“We’re going to own a judge!” he said happily.

The next time it happened, it was a state beef. The state revenue department started sniffing around the Southern Registry in East Cambridge, trying to find out if I was putting three-deckers in Somerville in the names of straws — namely, one of my daughters.

Apparently they thought my last name was Winter, not Carr. Then I ran into a couple of DOR guys in a barroom in Harvard Square. They told me it was an ex-state rep who was targeting me, and that his two minions, the ones who’d been skulking around the courthouse, had already been suspended.

I called my friend the lawyer, and he phoned the DOR and told them he knew everything. They were embarrassed. Everything went away. But I’m still waiting for my apology, for both my apologies.

Turn your telephone tip line over to the Herald.

It has become painfully obvious over the past 18 months that the DTA and Gov. Deval Patrick have zero interest in cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse in the welfare department.

What could account for this abject dereliction of duty? Professional courtesy, perhaps? More concern for illegal aliens and terrorists than the taxpayers?

Maybe Deval et al. really do believe that these crimes are but “anecdotes,” as the governor insists upon calling them. Ten percent of the 480,000 entities getting EBT cards turn out to have no current addresses, or maybe they just don’t exist. Whatever, it’s just a little “leakage,” as the governor says with a shrug.

Given this attitude, it’s no surprise that the DTA tip line, so-called, is where tips go to die.

Consider the latest outrage last week. A Dedham cop named Bob Walsh participated in the bust of an illegal alien Dominican drug dealer. This undocumented Democrat had been deported once and returned. In his apartment the cops found $65,000 in cash, 50 grams of heroin, 45 grams of cocaine … and an EBT card for his illegal-alien galpal.

Detective Walsh made his first call to the “tip line” five weeks ago. When the phone didn’t ring, he knew it was the DTA. All it took to finally get action was a front-page story in this newspaper Thursday. First the DTA refused to say anything about the case. After the page-one story appeared, the DTA claimed they’d already referred Walsh’s heads-up to the state auditor’s investigations bureau.

But the crack sleuth who called Walsh said he’d just been handed the case that morning, after the paper hit the newsstands.

Now the powers that be claim to be shocked, shocked that illegal aliens are obtaining EBT cards. Maybe they should have driven over to South Boston and asked Auntie Zeituni how it’s done.

Or they could have spoken to state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton).

“It’s pretty obvious,” she said on Friday. “If you don’t have a Social Security number, they give you a ‘placeholder’ number. That means anybody can get an EBT card.”

Last year the Legislature considered a bill to prevent EBT cardholders from getting cash with their Everything-Free-in-America plastic. How mean-spirited, the moonbats whined, voting down the amendment. Now it turns out the Tsarnaev brothers went on a cash spree with their EBT cards before the bombings.

Considering that Tamerlan’s occupation is listed on his death certificate as “Never Worked,” where do you suppose he got the money to build his pressure-cooker bombs? Most likely from the very people he killed and maimed — American taxpayers.

We at the Herald couldn’t possibly do a worse job than the Department of Terrorist Assistance does in policing the non-working classes. These DTA pencil-pushers aren’t watchdogs, they’re lapdogs, and that’s just the way the Democrats, from former welfare-recipient Deval on down, like it.

Meanwhile, the ACLU of Massachusetts is weighing in … on the high cost of putting photo IDs on EBT cards. It would cost so very much — $4 million. So I suppose the American Civil Liberties Union is even more opposed to spending $275 million yearly on welfare for illegal aliens, the House Republicans’ lowball estimate of the cost to Massachusetts taxpayers.

In its “alert” to the bleeding hearts, the ACLU says that photo IDs, which are required to do anything in this society except vote and collect free money, would “stigmatize people who receive government assistance,” you know, like the galpals of once-deported illegal-alien Dominican drug dealers with $65,000 lying around their apartments.

The ACLU continues: “Putting photos on EBT cards will not solve perceived problems of program fraud.”

Note that adjective “perceived.” In other words, there really isn’t a problem in the welfare department, it’s all just … anecdotes.

So I beseech the Legislature, let the Herald take over the DTA tip line. We’ll even change the name to something more palatable. How does the Anecdote Line sound? The Perceived Anecdote Line?

It’s time to bring privatization back to the hackerama of state government.

He’s trying to get on “60 Minutes,” like his brother before him. Now we know why he shaved his beard.

Of course, it won’t happen, at least not until after his trial. But you can’t blame the accused serial killer for wanting to taint the jury pool, a jury of his peers, and what better jury of his peers could he get than the “60 Minutes” audience?

He’s 83, which puts him on the younger side of the “60 Minutes” demographic, which is 80 to death.

And we know he’s a big fan of the show. In fact, Whitey was watching in Santa Monica the night in 2008 that his old partner, Johnny Martorano, went on and talked about what he would do to his light-in-the-loafers pal if he ever got hold of him.

Whitey was so angry he got out a legal pad and began dictating his own memoirs:

“I have been driven to this by the lies of John Martorano and seeing his insane interview on 60 Minutes was the last straw.”

To which Martorano replied, “Why didn’t he just change the channel?”

It’s the perfect venue for Whitey. Like the Globe, it’s not really journalism — remember their hoax story in 2004 about George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard? These days “60 Minutes” more closely resembles a cross between MSNBC and the second hour of “Good Morning America.” A mix of Pravda and show-biz schmaltz.

As far back as 1992, Whitey’s little brother Billy benefited from the show’s lax standards. The 65-inch-high tyrant known as the “Corrupt Midget” was portrayed as Jimmy Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” As part of their faux journalism, they even let the CM throw out a line about the mass murdering, drug-dealing, bank-robbing Whitey:

“He’s my brother. I care about him. I encourage him to come by (my house) all the time.”

Oh, isn’t that touching? Of course, the problem now is, “60 Minutes” won’t be able to find a lot of people willing to go on the air and talk about how “it’s just plain fun to have a leader with blood in his veins.”

That was what the 100-year-old reporter from “60 Minutes” said about Billy Bulger back in 1992. Maybe the new reporter could say something like, “It’s just plain fun to have a gangster who doesn’t mind draining the blood out of his partner’s girlfriends’ (that’s plural) veins.”

Don’t worry, Whitey, they won’t fact-check anything you say. That’s “60 Minutes’” motto: Some stories are just too good to check out.

Guaman has yet to stand trial for second-degree murder. Last month, days before another foreign freeloader ran amuck and massacred American citizens, Guaman got still another continuance.

The judge, naturally enough a Deval Patrick appointee, said the illegal couldn’t be tried because of his “unique cultural and linguistic” background.

His native tongue is an Indian dialect called Quecha. The bleeding-heart judge said he has “no understanding of the legal system,” although Guaman has been able to get a number of criminal charges against himself tossed over the years.

Matthew Denice’s mother, Maureen Maloney, has written a letter about her anguish:

“I would like to get the focus of the court system back on the real issue … Nicolas Guaman killed my son!!!!! Losing a child is the most excruciating pain in the world. I honestly don’t know how I haven’t died of a broken heart.

“Imagine the pain Matthew suffered, being run over two times by a big pickup truck, dragged ¼ mile and run over a third time. I have been told my son’s internal organs were hanging out of his body. His body was so mutilated the EMT’s were not sure if they could transport him in one piece. Those are the images that fill my head. …”

Inside Guaman’s truck, the cops found his son, as well as “numerous beer cans.”

But Guaman’s taxpayer-funded psychologists have concocted a defense for his accused drunkenness. You see, Guaman is an Indian.

As the judge quoted the so-called experts, “Nearly half of indigenous South Americans from Mongoloid descent are deficient in an enzyme required to break down and metabolize alcohol.”

So it wasn’t his fault! He was a victim!

How far do you think an American “Caucasoid” who claims to be “deficient in an enzyme” would get if he used that defense for his OUI?

Mrs. Maloney continued: “Guaman entered into an agreement with the court, to be used if there ever is a trial, stating that he was in fact driving the truck in exchange for not having his son testify against him. So we have Guaman driving the truck … (and) a document from Guaman attesting to the fact that he was driving the truck. How have we gotten so far away from a murder trial?

“The mental incompetency tactic is Guaman’s only chance of not spending many, many years in jail.”

This fight is Ed Markey’s to lose, and he is eminently capable of doing just that. Your job is to get out of his way.

Gabriel, you seem like a decent enough guy, even if you are basically a liberal Democrat. But that’s OK when you’re running against Ed Markey. This is shaping up as another of those lesser-of-two-evils races.

As you have figured out by now Gabriel, you are the home-state favorite son in this election, even though you were born in L.A. and raised in Washington state. Ed Markey hasn’t been seen in the commonwealth since … well, since Frank Sargent was governor and Chuck Fairbanks was coaching the Patriots.

Speaking of the NFL, before the AFC championship game in January, many cynics questioned whether Fast Eddie, as a longtime resident of Chevy Chase, Md., would be rooting for the Pats or the Baltimore Ravens. This was terribly unfair. Everyone knows that Chevy Chase is Redskins territory, or should I say Redtails, which I’m sure is what Markey would have been in favor of changing their name to.

After all, when you’re a Democrat who once voted in favor of rolling back Roe v. Wade, you have to take every possible PC position, no matter how ridiculous.

Most voters know Markey only from his photo on a milk carton, and at first it seemed like that would be a hindrance in a statewide campaign. But after watching him on the stump, it’s clear that being MIA for 35 years has been a canny political strategy, because voters had forgotten, if they ever knew, just how bad Markey is.

He’s making Marsha Coakley look like Margaret Thatcher. He’s making Granny Warren look like Joe Lieberman. He’s campaigning as a cross between Ichabod Crane (his looks) and Rip van Winkle (his grasp of modern-day Massachusetts).

Here’s just one example: In January, he went to a meeting of the Democratic Town Committee in Framingham, which is in his district, whether he knows it or not. Due to his august office, Markey got to speak first, and he proceeded to introduce the other elected officials who were present, including the lieutenant governor — Tim Murphy.

That’s what he called Crash Murray — Tim Murphy. Again and again and again.

Now, JFK could get away with calling Kevin White “Calvin White,” and Teddy once referred to Marty Meehan as “Andy Meehan.” But as Lloyd Bentsen might say, we knew the Kennedys, and Ed Markey is no Kennedy.

Just ask Lt. Gov. Tim Murphy.

Take Markey’s victory speech — please. In his first exposure to the vast majority of the electorate, Markey chose to concentrate on, among other non-issues, the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the Citizens United decision. Can someone say, Who gives a bleep?

Check out the primary results, and I don’t just mean the terrible turnout. It looks like Markey and Stevie Lynch were running in different states. Markey swept moonbat Massachusetts by lopsided margins — Cambridge, Newton, etc. South of the city, where people rely on paychecks rather than trust funds, it was “Landslide Lynch.”

Yes, it’s true that Lynch’s 43 percent added up to more votes than the combined total of the three GOP candidates. But how many Lynch voters can ever be persuaded to pull the lever for Markey? If Markey’s lucky, they’ll stay home on election day.

Getting back to you, Gabriel Gomez, in some of those GOP debates, you looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. That’s the bad news. The good news is, in the Democratic debates against Lynch, Markey looked like a moose in the headlights.

Gabriel Gomez, carpe diem. Let Markey be Markey, and the U.S. Senate seat is yours.

Please, no more talk about how they’re “only” 19 years old and they don’t understand the customs of the Western world. Deportation is way too easy. Two weeks ago, if they call 911 after they get the infamous “lol” text from Junior Terrorist, Sean Collier is alive today.

Obstruction of justice, misprision of a felony — call it whatever you want, these punks are responsible for one death and the near-death of T cop Richard Donohue.

Of course, we’re still supposed to believe this was a “lone-wolf” operation. A lone wolf here, a lone wolf there, three more lone wolves brought into court on Wednesday. How many lone wolves, as somebody asked, does it take to make a wolf pack?

Borat No. 1’s mouthpiece said his client “feels horrible and was shocked.”

Borat No. 2’s lawyer said his client is “shocked and horrified.”

Needless to say, nobody knew from nothing that their pal was a bomber, even though he’d been bragging to them about his bomb-making prowess. What could they possibly know about infernal devices? Well, they understood enough to get the Vaseline the hell out of Junior Terrorist’s dorm room.

And that’s another thing. After they got back to their apartment in New Bedford, the Borats and their faithful Cantabrigian companion “freaked out” when they saw their comrade on CNN.

Yet they again neglected to call 911. Instead, they return to UMass Dartmouth to scrub the incriminating evidence out of Junior’s room.

OK, so these guys  weren’t the brightest bulbs. One of them actually flunked out of UMass Dartmouth. Who knew that was even possible?

Like the Tsarnaevs, they had a fancy imported German vehicle. Tamerlan, aka Speedbump, favored a Mercedes. It was all he could afford, being on welfare. The Borats preferred a black BMW, complete with that “Terrorista #1” novelty 
license plate.

As one of their fathers back in Boratastan said of the plate, “It was a joke.”

A botched joke, as John Kerry would put it.

And now the campaign to turn the Borats into harmless, lovable waifs begins. Why, it was just a prank, like rush week on Fraternity Row. I can see the campaign unfolding now, sob story by sob story, in the pages of the Globe, where Speedbump is fondly recalled as a “stay-at-home dad.”

You might say the PR cover-up has already begun. The most damning part of the complaint is their non-response to Junior’s “lol” when they ask him if he’s a terrorist. The Globe did manage to mention “lol” — in the 22nd paragraph. That’s not burying the lead, that’s cremating it.

It’s “stunning,” said someone at the State House who’s seen the documents. It’s a “bonanza.” It’s also business as usual when it comes to taking care of foreign freeloaders, legal or illegal.

The scope of the welfare these people were grabbing is so immense that even Gov. Deval Patrick’s PC veneer is wearing thin. Last week he went so far as to drop the usual euphemism of “benefits” to admit that they were “on the dole.” Such hate speech!

It’s now been confirmed that the Tsarnaevs got Section 8 housing. They lived in Cambridge. Rents are expensive even in the not-so-nice parts of the People’s Republic. Let’s figure $800 a month in subsidies, over 10 years.

At that rate, Section 8 alone would come to $96,000. (If these numbers are off, Gov. Patrick, feel free to give the Herald the 500 pages you turned over to the Legislature so we can write a correction.)

Then there’s the “cash” — also known as EBT cards, and “SNAP,” formerly known as food stamps. And Mass Health.

The only documents Deval has turned over, under duress, involve state-run programs. What about the federal handouts available to these poor persecuted political refugees, who sometimes took six-month vacations in their native land where they were so oppressed?

Ever hear of “crazy checks”? That’s SSI, and it’s not just for widows and orphans anymore. SSI now includes a scam under which parents get their minor children diagnosed with some sort of usually invisible malady, making them eligible for $400 or $500 a month.

Tell me KleptoMom didn’t know about this grift.

And here’s a quote from a neighbor in The Wall Street Journal last week about Tamerlan: “His back was in really bad shape.”

Can somebody say SSDI — disability. Nationwide, we’re up to 8.9 million people on “disability,” and that’s growing by close to 100,000 a month despite the so-called recovery. Even more people go out on “back problems” than on that other epidemic malady, “sad feelings.”

After two years on SSDI, you’re eligible for … Medicare.

This was just one foreign family, admitted legally. Now they want to give amnesty to at least 11 million illegal aliens — all of whom will be eligible for welfare immediately, according to Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Do the math. Then go out and get another job, or maybe two. The next tidal wave of Tsarnaevs is counting on you.

That’s an introduction I would love to make up at Devens. Junior is of course in solitary right now at the army base-turned-prison hospital. But if they do eventually move the retired pot dealer into something closer to the general population, it would be proper and fitting that he room with Anthony St. Laurent, 71, the Rhode Island mobster known as the Saint.

Why would the Saint be such a perfect cellmate for the Chechen chiseler?

Because the Saint once informed a federal judge that he couldn’t go to trial because he takes “40, 50 enemas a day.” After which his new underworld moniker became “Public Enema No. 1.”

Wouldn’t it be great to have them sharing a single cell, with a single toilet? The Eighth Amendment forbids the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment,” but this one the Bureau of Prisons could possibly get away with, over no doubt vociferous protests by the ACLU, CAIR, the Department of Terrorist Assistance and all the rest of the usual bleeding-heart suspects.

I’m not saying the Saint has a problem, but the last time he was on trial, I was told that they had to handle most of his court appearances via “video conferencing” from Devens. Why? Because everybody at the prison refused to drive the odiferous, toothless moron down to Providence in the confined quarters of an automobile.

Do I have to draw you a diagram?

Study the photograph of the Saint. It was taken in the lobby of the old courthouse in Post Office Square maybe 15 years ago, just after he had taken the Fifth Amendment in Boston when asked if he were an FBI rat. Look at that coat — it compelled me to ask him, “Hey Saint, who shot the couch?”

He glared back at me. “You’re dat guy on ’PRO, right?” I nodded, for indeed at the time I was. “You shouldna oughta be sayin’ dem things about people on the radio.”

The Saint had a long-running feud with Robert DeLuca, another Rhode Island plug-ugly who is also a dead ringer for Judge Mark Wolf. DeLuca used to always accuse the Saint of being a rat, but not so much lately, since DeLuca and his new family vanished from Providence one day, following DeLuca’s induction into the largest of all organized-crime families.

The Witness Protection Program.

The Saint isn’t scheduled to be released until 2016, much, much earlier than the accused terrorist who mistook his brother for a speed bump.

The current bit the Saint is working on stems from his final attempt to kill his nemesis DeLuca.

The Saint hatched his plot while incarcerated at Devens, his home away from home. The Saint went to a fellow con soliciting help in recruiting a hit man. The Saint’s helper immediately went to the feds in hopes of reducing his sentence.

The G-men sent a wired “hit man” into the Devens visiting room to meet with the Saint.

“I want you should hit DeLuca,” the Saint said. “Shoot him in the head, and then you tell him, ‘That’s from the Saint.’ ”

Those instructions have always perplexed me. Wouldn’t it be better to have told DeLuca who was going to kill him before, rather than after he’s dead?

But you can see how much wisdom the Saint could impart to the Muslim whippersnapper. And let us not forget, both were involved in crime in Bristol County, Junior allegedly selling weed at UMass Dartmouth, the Saint shaking down bookies in Taunton.

One final point: If you want to check out the Saint on the Bureau of Prisons website, the only way to locate him is by misspelling his name. You have to spell it “St Laurent,” not St. Laurent.

That’s the screwed-up way the feds operate. But Junior won’t need the Saint to figure that out. He’ll be spending the rest of his life seeing it firsthand for himself.

Do you really think that Gov. Deval Patrick would be hanging on to those terrorists’ welfare files even tighter than he clutches Lt. Gov. Tim Murray’s state cellphone logs from the morning of Nov. 3, 2011?

If these were “domestic” terrorists, I guarantee you Deval would have coughed up everything by now, up to and including whether they were getting on-the-arm brand-name or generic prescription drugs.

Hey Deval, I’ve got some news for you. Tamerlan doesn’t care if you release his welfare records. He’s got his hands full right about now with the 72 virgins.

Bulletin, governor: Their last name is Tsarnaev, not LaGuer, so why do you care?

Deval said yesterday, “I can understand people’s curiosity.”

Curious? How about, furious?

Interesting, though, how welfare recipients — at least if they’re foreign terrorists — have more privacy rights than state workers.

If you go to bostonherald.com, you can find out the salaries (or pensions) of every state worker in Massachusetts. Of course, those people are citizens and taxpayers. The only ones lower than taxpayers on the PC totem pole are gun owners — by God, you can print their names, and addresses.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, on the other hand, was an alien mass-murdering deadbeat. Excuse me — he was a “stay-at-home dad.” That’s how the Globe describes him — where are we going to get our laughs when the bow-tied bumkissers are gone?

But despite Deval’s shameless preening for the next Profiles in Courage Award, the reality is that his hacks are releasing the Tsarnaevs’ public records.

A Bulger bumkisser named Bob Connolly (projected 2013 pay: $184,161.90 a year) issued this statement for UMass Dartmouth, alma mater of Dzhohkar: “Student records including academic records … cannot under federal law be released without a student’s consent.”

Really? Then how was The New York Times able to report that Junior got “F’s in Principles of Modern Chemistry, Intro American Politics, and Chemistry and the Environment … and a D and D-plus in two other courses.”

Dzhokhar’s a regular John Kerry. You’d think he’d have done better in chem, being a bomber and all. Wonder what he got in driver’s ed, given how he used his brother as a speed bump last week.

Maybe for their next trick, the Times will print Obama’s academic records. Nah, probably not …

But cut Deval some slack. He isn’t stonewalling for the terrorists, he’s just sheltering in place. And after all, the Tsarnaevs were only taking the welfare Americans can’t be bothered taking.

Here’s my tabloid headline suggestion: “Patrick to Taxpayers: Drop Dead.”

Open the damn books! If somebody tries to murder you, you have a right to know everything about them, privacy be damned. I want to know everything about them, and I want to know it now, right down to the quality of the weed Dzhokhar was peddling down at UMass Dartmouth.

Were they living in Section 8 housing in Cambridge?

Did they use Obamaphones to detonate the pressure-cooker bombs?

Did lovebirds Katherine and Tamerlan sign up for the WIC program as soon their daughter was born?

Mass Health? SSI? SSDI? Were there any handouts these deadbeats weren’t grabbing?

Did Tamerlan really become “radicalized” when the state took away his EBT card and, by the way, why should I even believe that he had to give up his card, because no other layabout has ever had to?

Considering that Massachusetts supported them in their leisure, can you call their bombings “state-sponsored terrorism”?

Did the Tsarnaevs collect the so-called earned-income tax credit, even though they worked about as often as Santa Claus?

Where did all their cash come from, and don’t tell me that Tamerlan owned an “old” Mercedes — save that Vaseline for the Globe. How did he have a Mercedes when he was 25 years old, even though he’d never had a job?

Why is most of the state-controlled media trying to turn Dzhokhar into the white Trayvon Martin?

Does DTA stand for Department of Terrorist Assistance?

Did the Tsarnaev brothers’ mother, Zubeidat, file quarterly estimated income taxes on her shoplifting earnings?

If the Tsarnaevs were so persecuted in Kleptostan that they needed “asylum,” how come all of them fly back and forth to that Third World hellhole like they’re jumping on the Red Line to Park Street?

Does Gov. Deval Patrick still think these are just a bunch of “anecdotes”?

If Zubeidat returns to the Great Satan, will she get lugged on that default warrant out of Natick, or does she get a free ride … again?

And finally, will the guy whose SUV the terror twins carjacked in Cambridge put another “Coexist” bumper sticker on his new vehicle?

The hacks are dummying up on us. They’re circling the wagons, as if they were protecting a Probation officer.

I’ll say it again.

Open the damn books!